Musk's lawyers flail as judge refuses to delay Twitter trial
It's been a while since we've checked in on this year's most farcical (and yet high-stakes) non-acquisition, Elon Musk's abortive attempt to buy Twitter outright, and for fans of internet drama this thing is the gift that keeps on giving.
A quick primer: Musk originally offered to buy Twitter for$43.4 billion in April, entering into adefinitive agreement roughly a week later, then spent several weeks griping about bots on the platform before announcing he was going to pull the plug. No way dude, said Twitter, and launched alawsuit that could ultimately force Musk to go through with it (though this outcome is extremely unlikely).
Musk's legal team has since then tried unsuccessfully to have the trial moved to 2023, while Twitter's lawyers took off the gloves and outright accused the billionaire of 'sabotage'. With the trial date set for October 17, Musk's lawyers have been trying to come up with various reasons for why the deal should be terminated and received manna from heaven in the form of Twitter's former head of security Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko: who in August became a whistleblower,telling CNN about «major security problems that pose a threat to [Twitter's] own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy.»
Needless to say, Musk's lawyers have focused-in on Zatko's testimony and now his severance payment. Among Zatko's claims were that Twitter was using suspicious metrics in order to downplay the number of 'fake' accounts, which Zatko must have known would feed beautifully into Musk's bot narrative. Musk's lawyers responded by filing a termination notice based on the revelations last month, essentially saying Zatko was proving Musk's point, before issuing a subpoena to
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